Blind Jump: Space Themed Adventure Game with Roguelike Elements

[Evan Bowman]

The art style is just perfect, love the palette.

The only thing that doesn't make sense to me is that the player can only shoot in cardinal directions, especially since enemies seem to have full 360 degree freedom. I think it would be more fun if you aimed with the mouse and could shoot in all directions, eg Hotline Miami mechanics.

I've been considering changing it, only it really complicates the animations I would need to do. Hotline Miami gets away with it by being fully top down and simply rotating the player's sprite. I would need to animate a walk cycle in every direction the player would shoot. In time I may bring it up to 8 directional (or 8 animations with full 360 degree shooting), but it's going to be a lot of work

[Mörkö]

You could demo the mechanic without any artwork before committing to it. Then if it turns out not to be an improvement you just delete the branch from your git or whatever you use. Without having seen your engine, I bet that implementing the such a change wouldn't take very long.

But I didn't come here to tell you how to do your game just wanted to post my reaction to the awesome content you've shown. Really good job!

[Evan Bowman]

You could demo the mechanic without any artwork before committing to it. Then if it turns out not to be an improvement you just delete the branch from your git or whatever you use. Without having seen your engine, I bet that implementing the such a change wouldn't take very long.

But I didn't come here to tell you how to do your game just wanted to post my reaction to the awesome content you've shown. Really good job!

Thanks! Yeah good point, I am using git and adding a feature like that wouldn't take long at all really. I actually didn't write an engine exactly so much as I created code that implements the game's behavior (although with enough generality to make adding new features trivial like you said). I'm really impressed that a lot of people on these forums have written fully reusable engines, because that's way more impressive than what I've done, code-wise.

[Evan Bowman]

I've been playing around with ways to add a backstory to the game, without it being too intrusive (since the player will die a lot, and most people won't want to watch the same cutscenes over again). So I've been thinking of scattering parts of the characters' stories nonlinearly across the levels, for people who are interested to piece together.

[Sygmei]

As said before, the project looks damn good, I hope you'll add a lot and a lot of elements
(Ennemies, loot etc..)

[bitano]

As said before, the project looks damn good, I hope you'll add a lot and a lot of elements
(Ennemies, loot etc..)

What i hope to see is some trap mechanics. Kinda like in Bomberman.
So the player can put down a certain kind of trap / bomb with a timer and lure the enemy within range for:
- increased damage
- temporary complete freeze, slowness, or starting freeze and slowly regaining normal speed
- temporary immobalization (can still shoot, but not move)
- temporary blindness
- etc

[Evan Bowman]

As said before, the project looks damn good, I hope you'll add a lot and a lot of elements
(Ennemies, loot etc..)

Thanks! My plan is to add enough enemies and items for good variation between playthroughs, but not so many that people will have trouble adapting to their patterns. So right now it's about finding a good balance.

As said before, the project looks damn good, I hope you'll add a lot and a lot of elements
(Ennemies, loot etc..)

What i hope to see is some trap mechanics. Kinda like in Bomberman.
So the player can put down a certain kind of trap / bomb with a timer and lure the enemy within range for:
- increased damage
- temporary complete freeze, slowness, or starting freeze and slowly regaining normal speed
- temporary immobalization (can still shoot, but not move)
- temporary blindness
- etc

That's a great idea, tricking enemies into traps in games is always fun! I've also been thinking about adding traps to the levels for people to avoid (and possibly repurpose?). Suggestions like this are why I posted the project here in the first place, I can only be so creative all by myself!

[Evan Bowman]

Story stuff:

(click to show/hide)

[bitano]

Polaroid style...With some ambient animations i can imagine? I love it
Perhaps when showing them play a bit with (slight) rotation?

[Evan Bowman]

Polaroid style...With some ambient animations i can imagine? I love it
Perhaps when showing them play a bit with (slight) rotation?

Yeah I like the rotation idea, animation would be really cool but I'm not a great animator so I might add that later when I get better at it
I actually drew them as Polaroids because that way people can obviously tell they are photos, whereas if I just did regular photographs people might not know what they're looking at.


The very first room of the game, prior to acquiring a space helmet. Wonder what's behind that heavy door?

(click to show/hide)

[bitano]

Yeah I like the rotation idea, animation would be really cool but I'm not a great animator so I might add that later when I get better at it

Oh i didn't mean anything super fancy with animation, but more instead of just showing them onscreen, make them zoom in juuust slightly or (as you will) move the camera a bit from left to right when showing a polaroid and vice versa on the next. So ye basically play a bit with the camera in a very subtle way when fading into the polaroids. . Just a suggestion ofc.

The very first room of the game, prior to acquiring a space helmet. Wonder what's behind that heavy door?

(click to show/hide)

A SPACESHIP...OR ....OR....a TELEPORTER PAD !!! a three headed monkey?

[Evan Bowman]

Intro ideas:

[grok]

The game looks great!
I have a tiny suggestion, though. It looks like the main hero moving animation is a bit slow compared to the "speed" of the map scrolling. It seems like it is a fairy flying around 
I'd suggest that you increase the speed of the animation cycle when he runs .

[Evan Bowman]

The game looks great!
I have a tiny suggestion, though. It looks like the main hero moving animation is a bit slow compared to the "speed" of the map scrolling. It seems like it is a fairy flying around 
I'd suggest that you increase the speed of the animation cycle when he runs .

Thanks! I think you might be right about the animation speed, I'll play around with that and see what ends up looking best.

Small update: Enemies drop hearts

[Evan Bowman]

Hi,
I've still been actively working on this, and thought I'd share a brief demo of what I've completed so far. During the past few months I've been working a lot more on the code parts--I started the project as a way of learning C++ and making my first computer game, and after a few months it had grown into something really unmaintainable. I meant to demo it earlier but at one point I ended up scrapping about half the code and the whole project hasn't been stable enough until now.

I have a lot left to do, and a few things in the current demo are unfinished:
 - Critter enemies (the red guys) don't have an attack yet
 - Chests don't contain items, I'm planning on having opening a chest grant the player certain timed effects that wear off
 - The intro scene has a lot of the features disabled (the door is locked open, you can shoot through walls).

macOS version here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9evoceraioqsgza/BlindJump.app.tar.gz?dl=0

It is also Linux compatible, but I'm not sure exactly how to distribute software in linux as a simple package... in the meantime:

Code: [Select]

git clone https://github.com/evanbowman/Blind-Jump.git
cd Blind-Jump/src/
make depend
make Linux CPPFLAGS=-DLINUX
./BlindJump # <-- This runs the executable
Would a tarball containing the compiled executable be easier?

The only dependencies for building the project are SFML 2.3.2 and a C++14 compatible compiler, so in theory it should be possible to compile it on windows. I have no idea how stuff works in that environment though, so I have no idea how difficult it would be... but if you want to try compiling it: https://github.com/evanbowman/Blind-Jump

Enjoy, and let me know how I can make it better!

Edit:
Oh yeah I forgot, the controls:
x - shoot
z - interact/dash
arrows - move
esc - menu (items don't change yet when you select them, but the quit option should work, it just won't tell you that it's selected )
Should also support playstation controllers out of the box. If you have a controller you'd like supported, feel free to add it to this file and create a pull request: https://github.com/evanbowman/Blind-Jump/blob/master/src/inputController.cpp (in the function InputController::mapJsById())